Telangana ducks GST hiccups, revenue up by 15%

HYDERABAD: After registering an impressive growth in the State-Owned Tax Revenue (SOTR), Telangana has recorded a 15 per cent jump in collection of Goods and Service Tax (GST), which kicked in exactly a year ago.


According to revenue officials, the state government had earned Rs 23,014 crore revenue from July 2017 to June 2018 which is higher than the pre-GST era revenue of Rs 19,955 crore between July 2016 and June 2017. The growth rate will be even higher if exemptions of foodgrains and lowering of taxes are taken into consideration.

When GST was introduced a year ago, the state government feared it would lose revenue compared to what it was netting through Value Added Tax (VAT). In fact, finance minister Eatala Rajender had said the state would lose Rs 10,000 crore due to the introduction of GST. But a year later, Telangana has actually seen a big jump in revenue generation under the GST regime.

Govt claimed relief initially post GST

The state government had claimed compensation for loss of revenue during the initial months immediately after GST.

Explaining the increase in revenue under GST, revenue principal secretary Somesh Kumar told TOI: “This was possible because of analysis of data, generation of reports on major areas of taxes like automobiles, realtors and developers and work contracts as well as plugging of loopholes by serving notices to about 60,000 entities who had not complied with the norms and collection of arrears, particularly return balances.”

Officials said the minimum protected revenue for 2017-18 is Rs 1,745 crore per month, but the state was generating much more than that. “This fiscal, the protected revenue for the state is Rs 1,989 crore per month and going by the current trends, it would easily surpass the protected collections,” Kumar said. Continuing with the growth trend, in the April-June 2018 period, the state has raked in Rs 10,879 crore registering a growth of 18.5 per cent, officials said.

“The commercial taxes department has been one of the major contributors. The share of the CT revenue in the GSDP is 7.66 per cent in 2017-18 compared to 7.09 per cent during 2016-17,” he said.